The Math of Life starts with school.

Sometime life is just math. Do we add value to our lives? Where does that value come from? Is it stolen from the lives of others or is it achieved through our own noble efforts? What makes us truly rich or poor? Dollars do not add up to character and the soul of a good man is not for sale.

 Let’s begin with poverty. There is not a wealthy person on earth who has not reached wealthy status initially without income not derived from the poor. This comment means tracing created wealth to its foundation. Either labor or purchases of the poor are directly responsible for the survival of a business. Now let’s look at PARCC

To complain that there is no standard of learning is merely a ploy.  The standard is a diploma. The standard is getting promoted one grade at a time once requirements of proven ability have been demonstrated. It is how all of us adults who have PUBLIC EDUCATION generated diplomas got them. We reached that plateau of success without a test at the end of 12 years of education that would stop us from graduating. Good grades are the standard. So how does a young adult get to their senior year without reading on grade level? What are the options for that student and who is to blame?  That student, now an adult, is in jeopardy of being poor for the rest of their lives. 

Give up the rhetoric and the data and look at the function of business. Where did PARCC come from? Where did Common Core come from? Where is Pearson in all of this? Who benefits from a person who is doomed to poverty by whatever circumstances keeps them bound? Are those circumstances contributing to generational poverty something we can change?

Businesses want cheap labor. Labor cost coupled with the selling price of the product is the singularly most direct impactor of profit. Why give more money to one politician when you can give less to another and get the same influence? (I digress).  The point is business likes people in poverty and they want people to think what they are selling is important enough to buy.

College used to be important. In fact it was so important that people incurred debt for many years to get it. Now trade schools present a shorter or direct path to skilled careers. This brings us back to High School or primary and secondary education in the US. These systems are the foundation of the future.  These systems determine workforce, value of education, and the ability of a society to advance.  

 So what was so valuable to us that we allowed these human beings who could not read to advance? NCLB created a society that was left behind. To many that is ok because that is how it was designed. It worked. I know many teachers who have anguished over NCLB and PARCC. It is because they see the damage first-hand. They are those working in areas where it is almost destiny to be poor.

Business majors know that sectors influence economy. We can all agree that there was a housing bubble and that it affected financial markets to the point of collapse. What they won’t discuss is that the housing market was targeted by the financial market. We expect kids to learn to read, write, and do math. We as adults don’t do these things as we have our noses to the proverbial grindstone. Why would we sign anything that is so lengthy it is hard to read in its entirety? Why would we use a monetary vehicle that is so complicated we have to have someone we trust to explain it to us? The expression always read the fine print comes to mind.

We know math can be simple. There is nothing hard about adding what you make and subtracting what you pay from that amount. Everyone who has ever broken a dollar knows how to account for an expenditure.  If you want to predict over time then you multiply which is still just fancy addition. It does not matter what terms you use to label income or debt they are still plus and minus. These things have not changed. Business degrees get more complicated because we accept more terms and more challenging ways to achieve the same simple addition and subtraction.

So now we have PARCC and it is supposed to fix all our problems. The PARCC’s questions certainly don’t make math, reading or writing any easier to perform. In fact just as financial instruments have been allowed to become so complicated, the basic skills are being complicated. Maybe it is because the people who complicated what happens to your money in the bank are now attempting to control what happens when your kids are in class. Yes your kids, because this is not happening to THEIR KIDS. Charters are not required to take or administer the PARCC.

One must understand how PARCC is being used to close urban schools. Urban school budgets pay charter schools upfront based on Charter enrolment. Charters participating in the for profit mode select the kids they wish to keep often using involuntary opt in. This means that they cull their enrolment by sending low performers and alleged disciplinary problem students back to the public schools while keeping the funding associated with them thereby creating a profit. This profit is realized while creating a further lack of funding for already underfunded traditional public schools. Many parents remove kids from charter schools citing disciplinary actions or education performance that is no better and sometimes worse than traditional schools.

PARCC is intended to fire teachers for under performance and close schools for not meeting benchmarks while the PARCC itself has no established record. Teachers are blamed when the very systems to take and prepare for the test do not exist through budget shortfalls and unfunded mandates from the state. Meanwhile the test providers get rich without bearing the cost of preparation or administering the test. Teachers are forced to teach to the test instead of documented teacher approved methods. Any resistance means being targeted, leaving many teachers with three distinct options. These options are: Leave teaching, succumb to pressure, or fight back. Many are leaving as the stress of resistance and the harm done to the kids, teachers, and education as an artful skill is unethical and in direct opposition to why many became teachers. Many are fighting back because they have chosen to not surrender. They have chosen to place kids first, oppose the privatization of schools, and fight for productive education and equity for all students. Many have joined forces in their resistance. These people are called Badass Teachers or BATS. They are not just teachers they are people who care for education and the promise it holds. BATS can be found in almost every state and internationally.

Reports have been written about under preforming Charter schools, budget corruption, mismanagement of funds, and exorbitant salaries. The profit centers fail due to the emphasis of profiteers over quality education. They claim to be public schools when getting funding and then claim to be private when their budgets and expenditures are investigated. Urban school districts reporting a budget deficit often have a figure which directly mirrors charter school payment amounts.  When asked in an urban school district what the charter school deficit was compared to the district wide deficit no response is ever given. Charter schools are funded at 95 to 98 percent through taking district money first. They never have the underfunding problem and due to the legislation pushed by wealthy charter school profiteers they never will.

Such legislation in NJ is the Urban Hope Act. I will detail the legislation in another piece. For now I will say that through NJ legislation profiteers placed Trenton, Newark, and Camden public schools in harm’s way and set the stage for privatization and traditional public school takeover purely for profit.

So what can you do? Opt out of PARCC. It only takes a letter or note to the school that your kids will not be taking the test. It does not have to be detailed. Just opt out in writing. The districts are required to administer the test. Your kids are not required to take it. Do not accept the districts lie that the test is mandatory. You have the option of opting out. You are not alone. This is a National movement to break the data chain they wish to create. 

The company Pearson is monitoring social media accounts of kids and parents regarding all communication concerning PARCC. It is a violation of privacy and free speech.  That is not ok. What is clear is that we are making headway. We are making them concerned about what we say.  It is us who are being tested. Will we stand and fight or be the backs on which fortunes are built. The math is simple. Do we add to our lives or do we let others subtract from our lives while adding to their own?